Cornelia Meigs

“ The people went away homeward one by one, the fires burned down to heaps of blazing coals, the surf came roaring in, higher and higher as the wind and tide rose together, and the call of Appledore sounded deep and loud through all the growing tumult. Long ago Sally Shute had been dragged away to her bed, protesting loudly, but led by a determined mother. Johann Happs had wandered aimlessly off in the direction of his little house, so that only Billy and Captain Saulsby were left still sitting on the sand. The old man could not be persuaded to go home, nor would Billy leave him. ”

“ No, poppies have to have cool earth to dig their toes into, and cool salt air to breathe; it’s sea breezes that put the colour into them, and a good wet fog is their meat and drink. Poor things, I hate to think of them off somewhere drooping and withering for a whiff of fresh salt wind.”
“Captain Saulsby,” said Billy gravely, “I do believe you care a lot for those flowers of yours. You are always saying you don’t, but I think I won’t believe you again. I can see by the very way you look at them that you love them.”
“No, can you?” exclaimed the old sailor in genuine surprise. ”

“ THE MILL-CREEK ROAD Billy’s passage over the causeway was a hasty and somewhat perilous one, for the rocks were overgrown with thick, brown seaweed and still wet from the falling tide. Considering what a hurry he was in and how many times he looked back over his shoulder, it was quite remarkable that he made the crossing without mishap. He walked up a strip of sandy beach, climbed a steep bank and came into the cool, dark pine woods. ”

“ The black shadows outside turned slowly to grey, the moonlight faded and disappeared, a fresh wind began to blow the fog away in shore. Somewhere out yonder in the woods a bird began to sing, offering them their first hope that the night with its desperate anxieties and terrors was at last giving place to day. Billy went to the window and threw it open so that Sally too, from her place beside Captain Saulsby, might hear the promise of the dawn. ”

“ Such a person can tell you that it is not exactly the place described in this book, that it is small and bare and rocky with no woods, no meadows, no church, or mill, or mill-creek road. Perhaps all that the story tells of it that is true is that there the rocks give forth their strange deep song, “the calling of Appledore,” as warning of a storm, that there the poppies bloom as nowhere else in the world, that there the surf comes rolling in, day in and day out, the whole year through, and that there one’s memory turns back with longing, no matter how many years of absence have gone by. ”

“ If this wind could seem so sharp and bracing, if Lake Michigan could roll in such waves upon the beach, what would it be to feel the fresh sea breeze, and to hear the surf come thundering in on the shores of Appledore?
“What are you thinking about so hard, Billy?” one of his comrades asked suddenly, breaking sharply into his dream.
Billy drew a long breath, glanced up at the clock above the gateway and said,
“I was wondering how soon we can be getting back to the hotel. I have to make the noon train for Boston. I think I will go East instead of West for this vacation.” ”

“ A dead boy could not have slept more heavily than did Billy on the hard floor of the old mill. The wind rose and rain struck, pattering, against the windows, a door closed somewhere, perhaps not merely by the force of the wind. Captain Saulsby stirred in his sleep and groaned out loud, but still the weary boy slept on. The far-off rumble of some warship at target practice came faintly on the wind—it had no power to waken him. It was not until hours had gone by, not until one shower had passed and then another, and even the second one had cleared away ”

“ There was a good deal of stiff rustling of the Appledore population’s Sunday best, as in twos and threes the congregation filed in, fishermen and their wives, some more prosperous ones who farmed as well as fished, the hotel proprietor, and Harvey Jarreth in a suit of very new clothes.
Billy knew well that one should not look around, but he nevertheless turned full about to smile a greeting at Sally Shute when she came into the pew behind him. Her stiff skirts stood out almost straight around her and her yellow braids were brushed until they shone. ”

“ It was not their lives the man was threatening. He crouched over the window sill, steadied the barrel of his weapon against the ledge and took long, deliberate aim. Billy, as he ran across the room, could see over the stranger’s shoulder, down between the trees to the creek and the high rocks at the edge of the little harbour. There on the point in a patch of brilliant moonlight, stood one of the bluejackets who had landed with them. He held a flag in each hand and was spelling out some signalled message in frantic haste. ”

“ For as the ship’s searchlights slanted down upon them a moment too late, cutting a wide, white circle upon the water, they showed him a most unexpected sight. There, bobbing serenely on the waves, her sails drooping and a little bedraggled as though she were very tired, but her gay red pennant fluttering bravely still, rode the little craft that had been the cause of all his adventures. There could surely be no doubt that it was the Josephine. A moment she sailed serenely alongside, then the roar of foaming water from under the destroyer’s bow reached out and caught her. ”

“ He bade farewell to his aunt on the pier, embarked upon the waiting steamer and headed away toward the shore, toward the West, toward all the things he knew. Yet he stood on deck and looked back as long as he could see toward Appledore Island, until Captain Saulsby’s red-roofed cottage had vanished, until points and headlands disappeared and the green hills sank and became smaller and smaller on the horizon. ”

“ However, just before Billy passed out through the gap in the wall, he saw something that drove both lesson and laughter completely from his mind. He had stopped to take one more look at the little house, the sloping garden, the steep rocks running out into the foaming surf and at Johann Happs’ trim little boat riding at anchor just inside the harbour. One glance showed him clearly that the vessel was in distress, but how or why he could not tell. ”

“ Now, however, he had become too fast a friend of the Captain’s for that. A man who could endure pain as unfalteringly as Captain Saulsby did, who, although nearly a cripple, could still work for his scanty living and never complain of the toil and hardship, such a person was not to be laughed at.
Moreover, on the Captain’s knee was the model of the boat that was to teach Billy something of seamanship, the Josephine, a very marvel of graceful lines and intricate rigging. Such loving, patient care as had gone into the building of the little craft only those two would ever know. ”

“ THE LAST VOYAGE OF JOHANN HAPPS There was a story, one which Billy had often heard Captain Saulsby tell, of a ship that had driven on the rocks outside the harbour of Appledore during one of the terrible winter tempests. No boat could hope to reach her, so gigantic were the seas, and the crew had clung in her rigging all night, waiting for the wind to fall and help to come. ”

“ It made one feel queer and restless, Billy thought, as though one wanted something very badly and did not quite know what it was. It seemed strange how hard it was to make up his mind just what he was going to do.
The lake was very blue there on their right hand as they drove along the Sheridan Road sweeping constantly through neat suburbs, some large, some small, but all alike in one thing: that every one in the world was busy planting a garden. ”

“ She would be left alone there with a helpless delirious man, and with Heaven knew what lurking terrors in the dark old mill. The thought gave him strength to put every last atom of energy into one final endeavour and to struggle free of the current just as it was sweeping him past the last point of rocks. He felt the force of the tide abate a little, then he drifted into an eddy and came quietly to shore on a bit of gravel beach. ”

“ She seemed to have been thinking of Captain Saulsby even when she wrote her first letter, for she had said, “I hope you will find one companion, at least, who will interest you.” She had a great affection for the queer, gruff, bent, old sailor, and must have felt that he and the boy were bound to become friends. And now Billy, standing before the captain himself, shifting uneasily from foot to foot and looking into those small, twinkling blue eyes, was beginning, much to his surprise, to feel the same thing. ”

“ Captain Saulsby muttered something in his ear, but it was a moment before he could quite understand the half-whispered words.
“She’s an old craft, and I’m her captain,” he said, “it’s the right way for a boat and her old skipper to go down. But you’re young; it’s a shame for you, Billy. You would have made a good sailor; that’s the best I can say for any man.” ”

“ He was nevertheless uneasily conscious, even through the heaviest of his repose, of the swinging and bumping that attended his slumbers. He thought he must be still dreaming when some one shook him by the arm.
“It’s a shame to waken such a sleepy boy,” said his friend, the bluejacket, “but there’s something here you don’t want to miss seeing.”
Billy would have been willing to miss anything, he thought, until he had stumbled out of his hammock, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked where his companion pointed. ”

“ The party of boys reached Chicago on Monday, and played their basketball game that evening. For a moment the victory that was so hardly but so triumphantly won by their team blotted out in Billy’s mind the memory of what was stirring the whole world outside. Yet even on the way back to the hotel he felt the thrill in the air, he saw crowds gathering about the bulletin boards and heard some one say, “The President is addressing Congress now.”
He went to bed clinging somehow to the obstinate thought,
“There can’t be war, there can’t. Things like that happen to other people, in other places. ”

“ That’s a dangerous kind of man, Billy Wentworth, the most risky kind a community can have. A man who thinks he’s smart and isn’t—that’s about as bad a combination as can be made. Jarreth has a reputation to live up to, for being shrewd and quick and able to get the best of people; he nearly lost that reputation and he will stop at nothing to get it back. He doesn’t mean any harm, he hardly means to be really dishonest; but he’s so bound to prove himself smart that he will let anybody who is more of a rascal than he is, make a fool of him. ”